


Tadpoles

by Snickfic



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Mpreg, Self-Indulgent, Shame/Comfort, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-23 20:07:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12515532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: “You know how I said I, uh. Spend a lot of time in the lake? Back home?”“Yes,” Zhenya said cautiously. Yes, Sid had told Zhenya that he was an inhuman fish creature. Zhenya had mostly recovered.





	Tadpoles

**Author's Note:**

> "grumpy oviposited Sid having his tentacles gently sucked on" -- sparcck
> 
> "it's catfish tentacles, you don't need a reason" -- sevenfists
> 
> Thanks much to sevenfists for the beta and the whole chat for enabling.

Zhenya waited by the lake’s edge, next to the fire. He put another piece of wood on every so often. He listened to the night sounds for a while, and when they began to seem too wild, the night encroaching too close, he pulled out his phone and scrolled through Instagram. Finally he heard what he’d been waiting for: a splash as something broke the surface. He squinted towards the water, but he was night-blind from the fire. “Sid?” he called softly. He scrambled to his feet, too anxious to wait.

“Yeah.” Sid’s voice sounded rough, disused. Zhenya tracked his progress by ear, closer and closer to the shore, until finally he caught a glimpse of Sid, pale against the night and cut off at the knees by the black water. 

Zhenya waded in, heedless of the things he now knew lurked out in its depths. The water was at his shins when he reached Sid and wrapped him in the tightest hug Zhenya knew how to give. Sid’s skin was cool and clammy, and Zhenya fought down instinctive alarm. “You okay? So cold.”

“It’s my real skin, remember?” Sid teased gently. He sounded exhausted.

“We get you to house now,” Zhenya said, as if Sid had any intention of going anywhere else. 

They reached the shore. Wet sand crunched between Zhenya’s bare toes. He was ready and willing to march Sid straight up the path to the house, but Sid said, “The fire.”

Grumbling, Zhenya let Sid go just long enough to poke the embers apart and kick some sand on them. He glanced back to see if Sid was satisfied now—it had rained _yesterday_ and the fire was ten feet from a _lake_ , it would have been fine—and was struck dumb. 

In the fire’s dying glow, Zhenya saw Sid clearly for the first time. He was deathly pale except where dark markings barred his ribs. Long, fleshy whiskers hung from his face almost down to his nipples—or where his nipples would be, if he still had any. Irresistibly, Zhenya’s eye was drawn to Sid’s belly, the reason they were both out here by a Nova Scotia lake on a balmy night in June. He couldn’t see much difference, to be honest. Maybe a slight curve.

“Like what you see?” Sid asked. 

Zhenya couldn’t read Sid’s tone, but he remembered now that he had much better things to do at this particular moment than squint by firelight at what he could see perfectly well inside the house. “Always same Sid,” he said firmly, and began to herd Sid away from the beach.

It was a weary trek up a path that had not seemed nearly this long in daylight. “You okay?” Zhenya asked, halfway up.

“Just tired,” Sid said. Nonetheless, he gripped Zhenya’s hand a little tighter at the next series of steps.

They reached the house at last, Sid barely able to lift one foot ahead of the other. The light shone cheerily from his back deck, and they climbed up the deck steps. Zhenya slid the glass door shut behind Sid and flicked on the dining room lights. 

Sid’s skin looked even unhealthier a shade in this light—but not unhealthy for him, Zhenya really hoped. The curve of Sid’s belly was more prominent now. Zhenya also noticed he no longer had a navel. “What you need?”

Sid tried a smile. It was thin and kind of obscured behind the—whiskers. “Just sleep.” 

Once Zhenya had Sid sitting on the bed, he went for a towel to dry Sid off and a washcloth to get the sand from between his toes—not that that was necessary, it turned out. Sid had webbing there now, and his toes were much longer than they used to be. No wonder he’d had so much trouble with the steps up to the house. 

Sid shoved the rag weakly away. “I just—can we just sleep?”

Zhenya had been meaning to take a shower after he got Sid settled, but now he stretched out next to Sid instead. Cautiously he laid a hand on Sid’s arm. Sid was still cooler than Zhenya would like, but Zhenya was just going to have to get used to that. 

Sid’s breath evened out almost at once, but Zhenya lay awake a long time longer, brushing his thumb back and forth over Sid’s smooth, hairless skin.

\--

When Zhenya woke the next morning, Sid was still asleep, sprawled out on his back. He’d kicked all the covers off his side, and so, in the mid-morning light, Zhenya finally had a chance to take stock.

Sid’s chest and belly were white, not a friendly mammalian pink but _white_. His skin darkened into brown on the backs of his arms and down his legs. Below the gentle swell of his belly, Zhenya could make out the slit Sid had mentioned: the place the eggs went in. It was sealed shut now. Below that, another slit where Sid’s dick should have been.

Zhenya tore his eyes away before he freaked himself over that. He returned to Sid’s sleeping face. It was pretty much the same except for his nose, slightly flattened, and his whiskers: two on his upper lip, four in a row across his chin. He was still built the same, too. Zhenya had imagined that Sid would slim down to something nearer Zhenya’s idea of a mermaid, but he was still solid and muscular, a hockey player through and through.

He was still Sid. Just—fishier.

Zhenya bent and kissed Sid’s shoulder, which was how he found that Sid smelled different now, like damp earth. Like he definitely wasn’t human at all.

Zhenya decided now would be a good time for a shower. 

When he finished, he peeked in at Sid again, but Sid was still out cold. Zhenya escaped down the hall to look for breakfast. Waffles and sausage, he decided. Not strictly in line with his summer meal plan, but it was early yet, and he needed fortification. 

He was dropping the first waffle onto the plate when Sid walked in. He’d put on a bathrobe. “Hey,” he said, his voice morning-rough.

“You want?” Zhenya gestured towards the waffle, in deference to Sid’s—condition. 

“No thanks.” Sid braced his elbows on the breakfast bar and hung his head.

“Okay?” 

“Yeah.”

Zhenya waited, but no elaboration came. “How you feel?”

Sid shrugged and straightened up. “Weird. It’s all—” He grimaced and gestured towards his middle, hidden under the bathrobe. “—tight.”

Zhenya grimaced with him and turned resolutely to the waffle batter. If Sid wasn’t in pain, if this was all normal, then Zhenya did not need to worry about it.

\--

Sid got a whiff of the sausage and turned a shade of green that looked truly sickly on his already-white face, so Zhenya ate breakfast alone. Afterwards he cleaned up and went to check on Sid. He was in bed again, sound asleep, an arm thrown over his eyes. His whiskers were flopped all over his chest. They looked a bit like tentacles, Zhenya thought, and then was sorry he’d thought it.

He’d do some work in Sid’s home gym, he decided. If he couldn’t sun himself on a tropical beach, he might as well get started on the summer training. That was where Sid found him an hour later, lying on the floor after his first set of squats. “That bad, huh?” Sid asked. 

Sid sounded like himself, pleased about this mildest of chirps. He was still the wrong color. He wasn’t wearing any clothes, not even the bathrobe. The first thing that came into Zhenya’s head was, “Nude yoga?”

Sid made a face. “Sorry, is it weird? Should I—?”

Zhenya kept his gaze fixed on Sid’s eyes, which were a little greener than he was used to but otherwise the same. He didn’t know what to say.

“Yeah,” Sid said, as if Zhenya had answered. “That’s fine. I’ll just—” 

He turned and walked out, and before Zhenya could really decide how to feel about that, Sid was back, now wearing the bathrobe again. “So what were you doing? You can keep going, if you want.”

“You tell me how my form is all bad?” Zhenya asked, because he had tried this before. He knew how it went.

“I won’t, I swear.”

That was a lie. Zhenya knew it right away. Still, he put up with Sid’s pointers and critique for the remaining squats and all the lunges, and then he said, “You going to work out, or you just bother me?”

“Oh, uh. I’m not supposed to. I should—sorry, I’ll leave you alone.” And then, to Zhenya’s bewilderment, Sid disappeared upstairs.

\--

Zhenya did the next couple of exercises in his workout before deciding that was quite enough for a morning in the middle of June. He went upstairs and found Sid sacked out on the bed again. Zhenya watched him for a bit, taking in all those strange, alien features and spending extra time on the bump. The bump where the eggs were, that Sid was incubating.

Zhenya went and took a shower. It took longer him than usual; he kept getting distracted by his own thoughts and forgetting what he was there for. How the hell was he supposed to _keep an eye on_ Sid when he couldn’t even recognize a problem if he saw one? Much less have a fucking clue what to do about it, beyond Sid’s instructions to throw him in the lake if anything went really wrong.

Sid wandered into the kitchen while Zhenya was working on his protein shake. “Sorry I bothered you earlier.”

Zhenya took a long swallow. When he’d finished, he still didn’t know how to say that he’d expected Sid to fight back, not to _leave_. Instead he said, “You okay?”

“Yeah?”

“You sleep a lot.”

“Oh.” Sid dug his hands a little deeper in the pockets of the bathrobe. “Yeah, sorry. That’s normal at first. Getting knocked up is exhausting.” He tried a smile, or Zhenya thought he did. It was hard to see behind the whiskers. “Are _you_ okay?”

Zhenya’s boyfriend was a fish creature. Zhenya’s boyfriend was currently incubating fish creature babies. 

Zhenya snorted. “Of course fine. I’m just relax, work out. Easy day.”

Sid looked unconvinced. “Well, I’m getting something to eat. You probably won’t want to be around for it.”

There were mysterious tubs in the back of Sid’s fridge. Zhenya didn’t know what was in them, only that they were fish-person food. 

“Sure,” Zhenya said, and made his escape. He ended up in deck chair under a shade tree. It was still spring-cool here in Sid’s corner of Canada, and Zhenya spent a wistful moment thinking of Miami beaches before he settled down with his phone. He had a spy novel he’d been saving.

\--

One morning in March, apropos of nothing, Sid looked up from putting on his socks and said, “What are you doing after the season is over? Say the last couple of weeks in June, first week of July?”

That was both broad and highly specific, and Zhenya was not quite sure how to answer. He plucked a t-shirt out of the closet to give himself time to think. “Some of that time I go on vacation. Beach, swim, deep sea fish.”

“Sunburn?”

“Of course not. I never burn, what you talk about.” Sid sniggered quietly. Success. “Why you ask?”

“You know how I said I, uh. Spend a lot of time in the lake? Back home?”

“Yes,” Zhenya said cautiously. Yes, Sid had told Zhenya that he was an—an inhuman fish creature. Zhenya had mostly recovered.

“I just, uh. I have something I have to do back home. My parents will be around for part of it, if I need them, but not at the beginning, and I’d like some company.”

“What thing you have to do?”

“It’s not—you don’t have to come. It’s fine, there’s people that can keep an eye on me. Never mind.”

“Sid. What thing?”

\--

Zhenya spent the next several days that way. He shared a bed with Sid, worked out by himself, ate by himself, kept himself entertained. Sid mostly slept, which would worry Zhenya even with all the assurances in the world if he didn’t know Sid was spending hours a night in the lake.

“My skin dries out, being out of the water this much,” Sid explained. “And the swimming helps my back.”

Zhenya had noticed Sid trying to massage his lower back, above his hips. Zhenya’d been on the verge of offering to help when Sid had turned just enough so that even under the bath robe, the arch of his back and the swell of his belly resolved into something familiar. Suddenly Sid was unmistakably, undeniably _pregnant_. Zhenya’s breath caught. 

Sid noticed Zhenya looking. Hurriedly he straightened up and turned away.

“Why not you just stay in lake?” Zhenya asked now. “More easy for you.” Sid shot him a hurt look that made Zhenya want to apologize, except he didn’t know what for.

\--

On the third day, Zhenya settled in for yet another afternoon under the shade tree, a beer and two sandwiches for company. He’d dozed off when the phone buzzed in his lap. The text was from Sid: _I’m watching hockey in the den._

Zhenya waited, but no further messages appeared. He picked up his empty plate and headed up to the house. Sid was in the den, as promised. He was naked again, but as Zhenya approached, he hurriedly paused the game and covered himself with a blanket. “What we watch?” Zhenya asked.

“Game two of the Caps-Leafs series.”

“Fast,” Zhenya said, settling down on the opposite end of the sofa. “You just want figure out how to stop Matthews and Nylander.”

“It’s a total track meet. They get so much fucking speed through the neutral zone.” That was all it took to get Sid breaking down the most recent play. He turned the game back on as he talked. The backs of his hands were brown and the palms were a dirty white, but his gestures as he pointed out the play were the same, with the same blunt fingers.

Sid eventually caught on that Zhenya was watching him and not the screen. He dropped his hands into his lap. “Hey,” he said warily. 

Zhenya didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t make Sid clam up even more—or, worse yet, hurt his feelings. “Still hockey is most important,” he said, offering Sid a smile. “Still Sid.”

“Did you think I wasn’t?” Sid asked.

Zhenya licked his lips. “I—” But he couldn’t think how to finish.

Sid slumped, shoulders and face tentacles and all. Zhenya wanted to squeeze his shoulder, gather him close, maybe kiss him. But Sid’s mouth was inaccessible now, and Zhenya didn’t know if any of that other stuff was still allowed. His gaze fixed on his hands, Sid said, “Maybe this was a bad idea, you being around for this.”

Zhenya’s breath felt frozen in his lungs. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” Sid’s voice was very soft. “You’re pretty freaked out. I guess I underestimated that.”

Zhenya couldn’t deny it. “I don’t know why you want me here.” Sid stilled, a defensive rigidity that was almost worse than if he’d flinched. Zhenya plowed ahead and hoped he wasn’t making it worse. “I don’t know any what to do. I don’t know about this stuff. Nothing I can do to help. Can’t cook for you, can’t touch you—“

“I didn’t say you couldn’t touch me,” Sid said.

“—can’t swim under lake with you. What good I am? Just sit around, eat sandwiches, play on phone.” And go utterly stir-crazy, if things kept on much longer. “Can’t even talk, or I’m afraid I say something wrong.”

Sid looked up, startled. “You are? Afraid of saying something wrong?”

Zhenya shrugged.

“I didn’t think about it like that,” Sid said quietly. “I knew you were—but I thought it was just because I was, you know. Like this.”

 _Like this_ : a whole new species, a gender Zhenya had barely heard of and knew nothing about. Pregnant. Those seemed to Zhenya like sufficient reasons to be freaked.

“But I guess I haven’t really been helping. I didn’t think you wanted to know about—stuff.”

“I want to keep you company, like you ask. I want to take care of you, but I don’t know how.”

“Okay.” The tone of Sid’s voice and the set of his mud-brown shoulders were suddenly utterly familiar. The captain had identified the problem, and he was going to fix it now. He grabbed the remote and switched off the game, and then he turned to Zhenya. “So, yes, you can touch me if you want. Or if you don’t, that’s—I know I feel a little bit different now.”

“Smell different, too,” Zhenya couldn’t help but adding.

“Oh, yeah? I guess I wouldn’t notice. My nose is kind of—” Sid grimaced.

In the past three days Zhenya’d barely done more than press his palm to Sid’s shoulder as Sid slept. He peered across the vast chasm of empty couch between them, all three feet or so, and then he stood up and closed the distance. When he sat again, it was on the corner of Sid’s fleece, just inches from Sid’s hip. He knocked his knee against Sid’s.

“Sid,” he said, because apparently now was a time of revelation, “why you not wear clothes?”

Sid blew out a breath. “They don’t feel too good. On my skin, like this. And it’s not like they fit too good right now, either.”

“But fleece is better?”

“I mean, not really.”

“But you don’t want me look,” Zhenya concluded heavily. Well, it was fair. What reason had he given Sid to let him look?

“G, no. Not like that. I just—I thought you didn’t want to see.”

“I want,” Zhenya said feebly. Sid eyed him doubtfully.

Steeling himself, Zhenya folded his fingers over the top of the fleece tucked under Sid’s armpits and slowly tugged it down, inch by inch. There were the places Sid’s nipples should be, smooth and featureless now. There was the barred marking along Sid’s ribs. And here—

Zhenya froze as he recognized the curve of Sid’s belly. Sid slid the fabric from Zhenya’s fingers and pulled the fleece all the way off. The swell was pretty obvious now. Maybe it was just because Sid was sitting down. “How many?” Zhenya asked, the first of many, many questions he’d been keeping to himself for the past three days.

“Uh, five. Five eggs.”

Five small fish creatures like Sid. “They stay same, or they get bigger?”

Sid laughed. “No, they’re going to get a lot bigger pretty soon. They hatch in another day or two, and then they start growing.”

By extension, _Sid_ would be a lot bigger soon. Zhenya could barely conceptualize that.

“You, uh.” Sid cleared his throat. “You can touch, if you want. Or not. You don’t have to.”

Zhenya didn’t know if he wanted or not, but he was going to, anyway. Cautiously he pressed a palm to Sid’s rounded side. It felt the same as the rest of Sid: oddly slick and not quite warm enough. He brushed his thumb over the surface, and Sid squirmed.

“Tickles,” Sid said. He looked like he was trying to decide whether or not to smile.

A question came to Zhenya that had never occurred to him before. He searched Sid’s face, but he couldn’t seem to get past the whiskers to see any secret Sid might have been hiding. 

“What?”

Or maybe it wasn’t a secret. “You like do this?” Zhenya asked.

Sid ducked his head, and a whisker fell across Zhenya’s hand. Zhenya had to concentrate to keep from flicking it away, as if it were a spider or a bee. “Kind of, yeah,” Sid said. He met Zhenya’s eye, looking worried. “Does that seem weird?” 

“I don’t know,” Zhenya said, very honestly. “Everything weird.”

“I guess that’s true. I just—I like contributing to the community. I don’t get much chance usually, I’m usually playing or training or whatever.”

“You so big deal hockey player. Must be everyone’s so proud.” He assumed fish people still watched hockey sometimes. After all, they were _Canadian_ fish people.

“Mostly I make them nervous, honestly. Being famous, you know, in the spotlight. They wish I wasn’t. So I can’t be very involved other than this, and anyway I like kids.” Sid splayed his hand over his belly, his fingers touching Zhenya’s. 

“Big surprise, Sidney Crosby likes kids.” Sid flashed Zhenya a huge smile, so bright and familiar it made Zhenya’s heart ache, even if the shape and features weren’t quite the same. He asked, “How I kiss you like this?”

“Oh. Um.” Sid reached up with both hands and carefully spread the whiskers on his upper lip to each side. There, finally was Sid’s mouth, and Zhenya was so damn glad to see it and put his mouth on it. Sid’s lips were cool and not quite the texture he was used to, but he knew them all the same. He put himself to work kissing them as thoroughly as possible. After a few moments he prodded with his tongue, and Sid opened up to let him.

Zhenya pulled immediately away. “What’s that taste?” he demanded, too surprised to worry about Sid’s feelings.

“Oh, shit. Sorry.” Sid swallowed and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. Zhenya could not imagine it would do the fishy, muddy flavor of Sid’s mouth even a little bit of a good. Sid gave Zhenya a rueful smile. “Ruined the moment, didn’t I?”

“What _is_ it?”

“I mean, I can show you my dinner if you want. I’m getting kind of hungry anyway.” Sid got to his feet. “Do you want me to put the robe back on?”

Sid looked deeply odd at the moment, and he tasted worse, but he was still Sid. Zhenya had a lot of individual observations, large and small, to prove it. He clutched them to himself, and he said firmly, “Better you’re comfortable. Easy access,” he added with cheesy grin, never mind that he was not sure at this moment what he might have access _to_.

Laughing and shaking his head, Sid headed upstairs, bare as a babe.

No wonder Sid tasted fishy and muddy. One of the two tubs from the fridge was half-full of little fish of several varieties Zhenya recognized from evenings spent fishing on the lake, and also a crayfish. The other tub was full of mud. “You eat?” he said incredulously.

“I don’t _eat_ it. I filter through it. For particles.” At Zhenya’s expression, Sid began to look a little embarrassed. “Okay, yeah, sometimes I eat it. It’s a craving, kind of. And the minerals are good for the babies.”

“You eat this but not sausage? It’s because you’re pregnant?”

“Uh, no. Sausage makes me nauseous all the time in this form. Something in the grease.”

“It’s so terrible be fish person.” Zhenya was only half kidding.

Sid insinuated himself under Zhenya’s arm, so all Zhenya could do was drape it around Sid’s shoulders and hold him. Zhenya felt like he hadn’t had Sid so close in months. “It’s not so bad,” Sid said.

\--

“So you’re girl,” Zhenya said cautiously. He felt stupid asking it, but he was trying here, okay.

Sid had given up on the socks. One was on his foot, the other draped over his knee. “Not—really? We have five biological sexes. They don’t translate to male and female very well. But as a human, I’m, you know. All dude.” Sid cupped himself, grinning.

But Sid _wasn’t_ human. Wasn’t that the whole point?

\--

The days were easier, now—on Sid, too. Zhenya hadn’t realized before how carefully Sid had been holding himself around Zhenya, how calculated the glimpses he allowed of the fishy side of his life. Sid walked around nude all the time now.

He still couldn’t do much, between physical constraints and concerns about people seeing him if he stepped foot outside in the daylight, but he could watch hockey, so they did a lot of that. He started some light workouts, which was a sight: pregnant, whiskered, completely naked Sidney Crosby doing bicep curls.

“I think before maybe you smaller like this,” Zhenya said. “More—easy for swim?” Fuck knew what the word was in English.

“Hey, I fucking earned this body,” Sid said, grinning. “The training and stuff, it carries over. Everyone makes fun of my ass, though. They say it fucks up the streamlining.”

Zhenya laughed at him, warmed by the evidence of this universal constant, even among fish people.

\--

One morning Zhenya woke up to Sid shaking him. “Nngh,” Zhenya said. It was very early. Sid’s room was dim, and Zhenya’s mind was full of sleep and a very erotic spiral staircase. He’d been floating down it.

“They’re hatching,” Sid said.

It took a few seconds for that to penetrate Zhenya’s brain. He pried his eyes open. Sid was sitting up, eyes wide, lips quirked in the beginning of a smile behind his fishy whiskers. “Eggs?” Zhenya said.

“Yeah.”

Zhenya pushed himself upright and squinted at Sid’s stomach. It looked the same. He pressed his palm to it, and it felt the same, too, cool and with a little bit of give.

“You probably won’t be able to feel anything,” Sid said. “It’s pretty faint.”

“But it’s good, right?”

“Yeah,” Sid said, softly and so happy it made Zhenya’s heart squeeze. He pulled Sid into his arms and hugged him tight, and Sid hugged back. “Thanks for being here for this,” Sid said. 

“Of course,” Zhenya said. “I don’t miss out, even if it’s weird.”

Sid laughed quietly against Zhenya’s neck. His breath was cool, his cheek a bit clammy. The clamminess was for respiration, Sid had explained, so he could breathe through his skin as well as his lungs. 

His _skin_. Fuck, Sid was so weird—and holding Zhenya so tightly.

Zhenya shifted position just enough to press a kiss to Sid’s cheekbone. He let his hand fall again to Sid’s belly and linger there for a moment, just in case. All he felt was the rise and fall of Sid’s breath, so he moved on down. “What you like, like this?” he asked. He arrived at the slit he had seen on the underside of Sid’s belly. Cautiously he traced it with a finger, and Sid stiffened.

“Not there,” Sid said. “Sometimes, when I’m not—but not now.” Zhenya dropped his hand further still, to the base of Sid’s pelvis and the second slit he’d spent a lot of time not thinking about the past few days. As his fingers brushed across it, Sid inhaled sharply.

“Yes?” Zhenya said. Sid nodded against him, whiskers cascading down his chest and over Zhenya’s arm. Zhenya didn’t flinch even a little bit. 

“You have to coax it,” Sid said.

A challenge if Evgeni Vladimirovich Malkin had ever heard one. He pressed two fingers to the opening and stroked along the edges. Sid sighed, long and heavy, and let his forehead fall to Zhenya’s shoulder. 

Zhenya paused a moment to survey the bed landscape, and then he began to disentangle himself from Sid. “Back,” he said. “Back to wall.” That sounded wrong out loud, but Sid seemed to understand. He scooted backwards until he hit the headboard, his feet planted and knees sprawled wide. Now Zhenya could more clearly see the slit and the slight bulge behind it, and for one unsexy moment, worry overtook Zhenya. “You get yours regular back later, right?”

Sid laughed. “Yeah, I get my regular dick back. After.”

It was good enough for Zhenya. He lay down between Sid’s legs, braced himself on his elbows, and licked over the slit. 

“Fuck,” Sid breathed.

Zhenya alternated between licking and teasing with his tongue. Slowly the flesh began to swell, the edges of the slit parting. Zhenya shot Sid a glance, took in Sid’s squeezed-shut eyes, and then Zhenya put his mouth to the swell and began to suck.

“Fuuuuuck,” Sid said again. His knee trembled, knocking against Zhenya’s ear before Sid got himself together again. 

“Say what you want,” Zhenya said, because this was all very encouraging, but he still had only the barest idea what he was doing.

“Just keep—that. Do that.”

Slowly, over a minute or so, Sid—unfurled. There in front of Zhenya’s face was something inhuman but still easily recognizable. It was paler and smaller than the dick Zhenya was so intimately familiar with, but a dick all the same. “It’s so cute,” he said.

“Fuck off,” Sid said, laughing softly. He broke off mid-snicker when Zhenya took him in his mouth.

Sid was in fact a very convenient size for sucking on, like this. He tasted a bit like lake water, but Zhenya ignored that and kept going, sucking and licking and massaging the base with his fingers until Sid was trembling at every touch. Finally Sid let go with a salty little dribble on Zhenya’s tongue.

Zhenya sat up to survey his handiwork. Slowly Sid collapsed back against the headboard and loosened his grip on the bedclothes, his lungs still heaving. Skin-breathing hadn’t been able to keep up, Zhenya noted smugly. 

“Do you now?” Sid asked, eyes blinking open.

“In few minutes,” Zhenya said. Fish-person or no, the sound of Sid coming undone still got to him, but his boner didn’t feel particularly urgent. Instead he crawled a little further up the bed and put his ear to Sid’s stomach. He wondered what fish babies sounded like, breaking out of their eggs. After a moment, Sid rested his hand on Zhenya’s head and began to massage his scalp.

\--

“And then you have kids?” Zhenya said slowly.

“Oh, no. Shit, no. They’re not for me. They all have families out there waiting for them. I’m just part of the process. There aren’t a lot of—me. We take turns.”

Definitely not human.

\--

Sid’s appetite increased almost immediately. That afternoon, Zhenya found him in the kitchen wistfully looking inside one his tubs, now completely empty of fish. “I’ll have to wait until tonight,” Sid said, trying and failing not to look woebegone.

“I can go into town, buy some,” Zhenya offered.

“No, it’s better if it’s from the lake. And fresh. That stuff on ice at the deli counter is days old.”

It was a hungry, antsy day for Sid. Zhenya ended up fleeing out to the shade tree in self-preservation, and it was a relief when it finally grew dark enough for Sid to head down to the dark with his empty tub and an extra. It was a good thing Sid only did this once every few years, Zhenya reflected, or there’d be no fish left in that lake.

Within days, Sid was visibly bigger. Zhenya watched in fascination as Sid waddled around the house—the product of his odd fish-feet as much as his size—and Zhenya spent a lot of time with his hand pressed against Sid’s belly. Two days after the eggs had hatched, early in the evening, Zhenya felt movement under his palm.

“Babies,” Zhenya crowed.

Sid laughed. “You’re really into this.”

“Babies,” Zhenya repeated. The basic strangeness had worn off, or at least it had receded far enough that Zhenya could forget it for twenty minutes at a stretch sometimes. Besides, _babies_.

“You know they don’t really look like human babies, right? Thank God, because I could not handle carrying five kids that size.”

“What they look like, then?”

Sid turned shifty. “You probably don’t want to know this.”

“They look like you?”

“No,” Sid said slowly. He gave Zhenya a hard look, and finally he said, “They look kind of like tiny mermaids, I guess? Arms and a tail. Not really any neck, yet. And they’re a lot smaller, obviously.”

Zhenya considered that for a while. “Like baby frogs,” he suggested.

“Well, they do have the arms already, but kind of, yeah. Like tadpoles.”

Zhenya massaged Sid’s stomach while he thought. Sid seemed to like it, or at least he hadn’t complained yet, and Zhenya had given him plenty of opportunity. “But then they grow up and look like you, and they can be human or fish, whatever they want?”

“Uh, mostly. Most of them do.”

Zhenya—wasn’t going to pursue that one. “Human babies look weird too at first.” Zhenya vaguely remembered this from a long-distant class in school. “Like you say, arms and tail.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” 

It was not that strange, Zhenya decided firmly, and he went back to waiting for tadpole-babies to push against his hand.

\--

As Sid got bigger, he got crankier. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, again, as Zhenya tried to work out a knot in his lower back. The musculature was not quite the same now, a subtly shifted landscape, and anyway Zhenya was working against all the passive, irresistible weight of Sid’s belly. “Fuck, just—never mind.” Sid shuffled away from Zhenya on the bed and curled up on his side.

“How much longer?” Zhenya asked. Sid had originally asked for three weeks, and they were two weeks in now. 

“Way too fucking long,” Sid said, and rubbed at his forehead. “Shit.” 

Zhenya squeezed Sid’s calf. He was saved from trying to say something reassuring by the chirp of Sid’s phone. Sid grabbed at it and immediately brightened. “Taylor’s here,” he said, and began the work of sitting up and then getting off the bed. Zhenya helped.

By the time they got downstairs, Taylor had let herself in. She was pink-faced from too much sun, her hair tied back in a messy ponytail. “Hey, big brother,” she said, giving Sid a hug. “Fuck, you’re enormous.”

“Fuck you,” Sid said, looking happier than he had in days. “Oh my god, what is that?”

“What do you think?” Taylor asked, handing him a little plastic pail. Sid popped the lid off and dug out—a shrimp. A gray, uncooked shrimp. “Fresh-caught this morning. I picked them up on the way over.”

“Oh my god,” Sid repeated, and then he bit the front end off and closed his eyes in rapture as he chewed.

“You say only lake fish!” Zhenya said, outraged. Outrage was safer than disgust; it kept his stomach from squirming. Sid’s eyes popped wide open, and he looked to Taylor for support.

“He makes an exception for shrimp,” Taylor said smugly. Then she noticed the look on Zhenya’s face as Sid began to scrape shrimp guts off the inside of the tail with his teeth. “Hey, Geno and I are going for a walk. Your table manners are disgusting.”

Sid flipped her off and didn’t even slow down.

It was a bright day out, with a nice breeze coming off the lake. Zhenya had to squint for a few seconds while his eyes adjusted. “So how’s he doing?” Taylor asked.

“Good, I think?” Zhenya shrugged. “I don’t know anything about this, but he seem okay. Cranky.” He pulled an exaggerated scowl.

“Yeah, he gets like that,” Taylor said fondly.

“Eggs hatch, few days ago.”

“Awesome. I kind of figured, with the—” Taylor sketched out the shape of Sid’s belly with her hand and grinned, and Zhenya grinned helplessly back. “And how are you doing?”

“Fine?” Zhenya said cautiously.

“Yeah?” Taylor met his gaze, easy and free of judgment. “When did Sid tell you about himself? About us?”

“Few months ago.”

Taylor looked out across the water. “I’m glad you could come and stay with him. He really wanted you to.”

Zhenya stuck his hands in the pockets of his shorts. He’d picked up the habit from Sid, damn him, and now it came out whenever he felt uncertain. “I don’t know if I do him any good. It’s all a lot, you know?”

“It really is.” She knocked elbows with him, a friendly, grounding gesture. He must not have looked sufficiently reassured, because then she put her arms around his waist, her face to his chest, and there was nothing for him to do but hug her back. It took him a little longer to let go than maybe it should have.

“It’s a lot,” he said again, once they’d disentangled.

“Yeah,” Taylor said gently. “If it helps, it’s a lot for Sid, too.”

Zhenya tried to make that into something that made sense. It didn’t work. “What you mean? Sid’s fine.”

Taylor turned away from him and fixed her gaze downslope, towards Sid’s dock. “He didn’t get to be around everyone very much as a kid. He always had hockey. So it feels kind of weird for him, too, spending a lot of time in his true form. I think that’s part of why he wanted you around this time. Because you’re normal, and he wants to feel normal.”

“He’s pregnant fish person,” Zhenya said slowly. “He eats raw shrimp.”

“Yeah, well. Normal is relative, right?”

Zhenya thought about Sid watching hockey on the couch, about Sid’s crestfallen expression when he thought Zhenya thought he wasn’t Sid anymore. His chest ached with new regret.

“Hey, has he tried soaking his whiskers in warm water?”

“What,” Zhenya said.

“When he gets cranky like this, you should make him try it. It’ll help him relax. There’s a lot of nerves in those, you know.”

So much for normal.

\--

Taylor promised daily check-ins, now that she was back from vacation. “Daily shrimp?” Sid had asked, not even trying to be cool. Most of the little shrimp particles were gone from between his teeth by then.

“Not _every_ day, goober,” Taylor said, but she’d shown up every afternoon since with another of those little plastic pails. Zhenya had taken to spending a half hour or so outside immediately after she arrived, to avoid the carnage happening in the kitchen. Today she came out and joined him, and together they surveyed the lake as it glistened through the pine trees. “Two or three more days, probably,” she said.

“And then what?” Zhenya asked. Sid had been less than forthcoming.

“I mean, I’ve never been around for the next part before. But when he gets really close, he goes back into the lake. There’ll be some of us down there with him. We’ll take good care of him,” she added, squeezing Zhenya’s arm.

Zhenya sat heavily in the deck chair. “I can’t be there.” He didn’t know why this hadn’t occurred to him before. Of course Sid was going to give birth in the water. The babies probably couldn’t even breathe air yet.

“You could hang out on the surface if you wanted, I guess.”

“It’s dangerous for him?”

Taylor settled into the next deck chair over. “Not like with humans. Childbirth is way harder on humans than it is on most species. He’ll be fine.”

“And the babies, I get to see?”

Taylor paused, stricken, and he saw the answer on her face. “Maybe not this time.”

“It’s fine, right? He’s not keep anyway.” They weren’t Sid’s children, much less Zhenya’s. That didn’t seem to matter. Zhenya had gone and gotten invested in those weird infant mermaids that shoved each other back and forth under his palm. 

After Taylor was gone, Zhenya went and found Sid in the den, discontentedly scrolling through his menu of satellite channels. “Fuck it,” Sid said finally, after Zhenya had been sitting there a while. Sid switched the screen off and lay his head against the back of the sofa. “I’m so fucking tired of TV.” 

Zhenya shifted a little closer and squeezed Sid’s shoulder. “Over soon.”

“Yeah.” Sid smiled thinly as Zhenya laid a hand on Sid’s broad, round belly. “I always forget how much I hate this part at the end.”

“You’re very big,” Zhenya agreed. Sid groaned, which made his whiskers tremble, and Zhenya remembered what Taylor had said on her first visit. He’d passed the suggestion on to Sid, and Sid had made a face, and Zhenya had figured that would be the end of it. _He_ was certainly not responsible for the care and watering of Sid’s face tentacles. It still felt like an accomplishment every time the whiskers touched him and he didn’t flinch. But he looked at Sid’s face, lined with exhaustion, and then cautiously he brushed a thumb across the tip of one of them. 

Sid’s eyes had fallen shut, but they popped open now. “Whatcha doing there?” he said slowly.

“Explore. Shush.” Alert for any minute quaver of discomfort, Zhenya stroked along the shaft of the whisker. Sid made a choking sound in his throat, and Zhenya looked up, concerned. “It’s feel good, or not?”

“It feels—it feels pretty good,” Sid said, breathless. 

Slowly Zhenya traced all the way up the shaft to the base of the whisker, set in Sid’s lower lip. “For find food, right?” he asked. “In water?”

“Yeah.”

The whisker was supple, like a wooden switch, and moist, the same way Sid was moist everywhere. It wasn’t slimy or gelatinous or gross in any of the ways Zhenya had been so sure it would be. It was just another part of Sid: his weird, wonderful fish boyfriend. Decisively, Zhenya brought the tip of the whisker to his mouth and put his lips around it.

“Shit,” Sid hissed. Zhenya looked up in alarm and found Sid looking back with very wide eyes. 

Uncertain, Zhenya pulled off long enough to say, “I should stop?”

“No, no. Just—be careful?”

Not for the entire world would Zhenya harm Sid’s weird fish-whisker full of nerves. Not for another Cup or a knee good as new. “I’m careful,” he promised, and then he sucked the whisker deeper into his mouth. He massaged all around the tip with his tongue, teasing bitten-off moans from Sid. Then he licked his way up the shaft, pausing at intervals to suck it sideways into his mouth and appreciate the sounds Sid made. By the time he reached Sid’s chin, it felt natural to wrap his lips around it and suck a little more.

Sid groaned again and squeezed Zhenya’s shoulder hard enough to bruise. Zhenya hurriedly retreated. “Okay?”

Sid looked at him like Zhenya was brand new, someone he’d never seen before. “No one’s ever—” He cut himself off, but the meaning was clear. All the times Sid had been pregnant—this was his third brood, he’d told Zhenya—and he’d never had anyone to suck on his whiskers until he felt better. What a cruel and unnatural world it was. 

At least Zhenya could improve it now, just a little. “I do next one?” 

“God, please.”

Sometime in the middle of whisker number three, Zhenya found that Sid’s cute, stubby dick had come out from its hiding place. He worked that gently between his fingers and massaged the whisker with his tongue. Gradually Sid’s sharp, bitten-off gasps grew less controlled, until finally he shuddered and came on Zhenya’s hand. 

There wasn’t much come. Fish-Sid didn’t seem to ever produce much; maybe it had to do with those five different sexes. Zhenya brought his hand to his mouth and licked it clean.

“I thought you hated my whiskers,” Sid rasped.

Sorrow washed over Zhenya in a sudden, irresistible wave. “I’m sorry, Sid,” he said. He sat up and tugged until Sid leaned into him. “I’m sorry I freak out.”

“I mean, it’s pretty understandable. Nobody expects their boyfriend to be—well, what I am.”

Now that Zhenya was listening for it, he heard the note of self-deprecation in Sid’s voice, almost but not quite disgust. He tightened his hold on Sid. “I want to take care of you, even you fish person.”

Sid squeezed Zhenya’s forearm. “I know you do. And I know this is a lot to deal with. I really appreciate you putting it up with it.”

“Not _put up with_ —” Zhenya began fiercely.

“I mean—“

“No. You’re my boyfriend, I care about you. Not _put up with_ when you need help.”

“Okay,” Sid said, like he didn’t quite believe it but wasn’t going to argue anymore. He pressed a little closer to Zhenya. Zhenya tucked Sid under his arm and kissed his hair, and he felt a moment of gratitude that Sid still _had_ hair. But Zhenya pushed that unworthy thought away. He’d love Sid without hair, too. He’d love Sid any way at all.

Sid grunted and palmed his stomach. “Frisky today,” he muttered.

Zhenya felt a new pang for those children he wouldn’t get to see. Before he could think better of it, he said, “Someday you keep one, right?”

“What?”

Zhenya laid his hand over Sid’s. “Someday you do this, you keep baby for you.”

Sid was quiet for a few beats. Zhenya began to worry he’d said something wrong. Finally Sid said, “That kind of depends on my partner. There’s other ways to get kids, you know, G. Adoption or surrogacy or whatever.”

“You don’t want fish kids?”

“I—I don’t know. Is that what you want?”

“Maybe,” Zhenya said. _If you want them_ , but that seemed a little much, right this minute.

“Something to think about, I guess,” Sid said. Zhenya kissed his hair again.

\--

Zhenya gave Sid endless shit about his hockey. What were friends and teammates for, if not for that? But sometimes, late at night, after they were both well-fucked and cleaned off again and nearly asleep, Zhenya said other things about Sid’s hockey.

“When you get shot off backhand, one-hand—”

“It was just lucky, G.”

“—so beautiful. Like you not even human. Humans, they can’t do that.” Zhenya fell reverently silent, replaying the goal again in his head. Then he felt Sid’s fingers threading through his. 

“What if I wasn’t?” Sid whispered.

“Wasn’t what?”

\--

A few days later, in the early evening, Sid went into labor. Sid texted Taylor, and Taylor, presumably, passed the news along on the phone tree. A half hour later, Taylor arrived with her parents in tow, all still wearing clothes and looking like people. The elder Crosbys immediately went to check on Sid. Taylor hung back. “You okay?” she asked Zhenya.

Sid insisted there was nothing to worry about. His parents seemed efficient but calm, which made sense, because they’d done this all before. 

Zhenya had not done this all before. “I don’t know what happens now,” he said, trying not to show any of his panic.

“Aw, G,” Taylor said, and gave him a hug. “It’ll be fine. Really.”

Zhenya didn’t think it’d be fair to hold her to that, because what if she was wrong?

Eventually, inevitably, Zhenya found himself by the lake, alone. He was on the dock this time, feet hanging over. The water lapped gently at the pilons, and frogs croaked in the distance. Zhenya’s heart felt like it was turning inside out. Sid had waddled out here at dusk with his parents’ help while Zhenya trailed helplessly behind with Taylor. By then, everyone had looked like a fish-person except Zhenya.

“It’ll be okay,” Taylor had told him one last time, and then she dove off the dock after the others. 

Zhenya’s phone beeped at him, battery low, and he put it away, in case of emergency. Then he spent a few minutes worrying about who, exactly, he would call in case of emergency. 

A splash interrupted his worrying—a pretty big splash and from just the other side of the dock. Zhenya scrambled to his feet. He’d gotten his night vision by now, and he could just see a pale face staring up at him from the bottom of the ladder. “Sid?” 

“It’s me,” Sid rasped. He sounded even more exhausted than the first time Zhenya had sat vigil by this lake. Zhenya knelt and offered Sid his hand, and then gripped Sid tight and pulled him the rest of the way up. “I need—can we sit? For just a minute.”

Zhenya helped Sid settle on the edge of the dock, and then Zhenya sat next to him and pulled him in. Sid sagged into Zhenya’s side. “Fuck,” Sid said.

“You okay?” Zhenya asked. “Hurt?”

“No, no. Just sore. I’m okay, G.” Sid twisted and pressed a kiss to Zhenya’s neck, through the whiskers. 

Something broke the surface. “You guys there?” Taylor called. Her voice was a little throatier than normal. 

“Geno,” Sid said with sudden urgency, “do you have your phone?”

“Yes?”

“Quick, get it out and turn the light on.”

It took Zhenya a good sixty seconds to dig the phone out of his pocket and figure out the flashlight on it, Sid muttering impatiently all the while. Apparently he wasn’t too exhausted for that. Finally Zhenya flicked the light on. “Shit, that’s bright,” Taylor said.

“Not in front of the kid,” Sid said, taking hold of Zhenya’s hand and pointing the light towards Taylor.

There in Taylor’s hands, just barely beneath the surface, was a fish-baby. It was tiny, maybe ten inches long, though the wiggling made it hard for Zhenya judge its full length. Its skin was shiny-dark. Zhenya couldn’t make out the features of its face, but he saw one flailing fist beat at Taylor’s hand.

“It’s yours?” Zhenya asked stupidly.

“Yeah, it is,” Sid said, sounding on the edge of exhaustion but so pleased.

“Very pretty,” he said firmly.

Sid chuckled weakly. “No, she isn’t.” Zhenya was suddenly certain he would fight the world for that little fish-girl’s honor, but he’d let Sid get away with saying such things, just this once.

“Okay, she’s getting antsy. I gotta take her down,” Taylor said, and slipped below the surface again. 

Zhenya put his phone back in his pocket. Better to get their night vision back before they stumbled up to the house. He tugged Sid in closer. “Next time you do, I’m there, too. I bring dive gear.”

“Oh yeah?” Sid said, amused.

“Yes. Too hard wait up here, worry about you.”

“Shit, G, I’m sorry.”

Zhenya kissed Sid’s head and then regretted it a little. His hair was soaking wet and smelled of lake. “Shh, it’s okay. I’m glad you share with me, all this. Only next time, dive gear.”

“Next time,” Sid mused. “Seriously though, thanks for being here with me. I know there’s been a lot of—weird, to deal with.”

Zhenya squeezed Sid to his side. “Anytime,” he said, and he meant it with all his heart.

[end]

**Author's Note:**

> "So is Sid a fish creature or a frog creature, snick??"
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
